


you were on the other side like always

by aceofdiamonds



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 12:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3649572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ronan and adam, a fundraising event for gansey's mother, two long car journeys, and a lot of realisations.</p>
<p>“Manage to escape?” Ronan drawls, melting out of the crowd to join them. “Sargent’s stuck talking to that asshole about climate control,” he says gleefully, jerking his head towards the back wall where Blue is gesturing wildly up at a man with a goatee and a grimace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you were on the other side like always

**Author's Note:**

> this started when i listened to shut up and dance by walk the moon for three days straight and then it all spiralled away from that because that song is too happy for these sad books. title comes from what kind of man by florence and the machine

  
When Gansey asks them to come to a fundraising dance in D.C for his mom's campaign Adam means to say he can't go, sorry, he has work, but instead he finds himself saying yes, okay, what's the dress code? He puts this down to two possibilities - 1. there really is something kingly within Gansey, something Glendower shaped, or 2. it's simply Gansey alone. It's extremely hard to say no to him at the best of times never mind when he is actively charming towards you. Adam's the best out of them all at telling him he's not doing something, apart from maybe Blue, but this time he agrees. It's a dance. How awful can it be.

"I can't believe you agreed to this," Ronan scoffs. He's reclined on Adam's bed, watching Adam get changed in that way he has where he stares until Adam catches him and then his eyes skitter away. When Adam glances over he pulls out his phone, his finger scrolling down the screen for too long for it really to be doing anything. He appreciates the charade.

"You're going too," Adam argues. They all are. Bar Noah, but that seems to go without saying. Blue had ranted for a while about buying people’s support with fancy dances and inedible food and that she wouldn’t be seen dead at such an event but Gansey had persuaded her somehow and last time Adam saw her she had been sulkily sewing a hem onto a purple dress Adam knows she traded from Orla for a pair of boots.

“Yeah, but you’re the one always saying no to Gansey. What’s different this time?”

“Maybe it’ll be fun,” he says, and then glares when Ronan throws back and laughs, the sound sharp. “Shut up. Do my sleeves look too short?”

Ronan straightens up. When he knows he’s allowed to look, when he’s asked, his eyes narrow, taking everything in. It makes Adam feel half self-conscious, half pleased. With his suit on he leans into the part of him that’s pleased. “You’ll do,” Ronan says derisively. Sometimes he wants to see the world from Ronan's eyes, see himself from that perspective, just to see what the big deal is.

Of course, when Ronan rolls off the bed into a standing position, his shirt crumpled slightly, he looks like he would fit in perfectly at Gansey’s event. He has the shaved head, the tattoo that is barely visible at the gape at the neck of his shirt, but he also has the ability to talk money with these people, the charm hidden away within him that has older women wanting to cup his cheek, grab his ass, and slip him a couple hundred dollars for the cause. Ronan knows how to work people like this in his sleep. This is an area Adam can’t learn.

“Gansey’s taking Blue up in the Pig,” Ronan tells him, pulling his suit jacket on. “We’ll meet them there.”

"Whose car?"

Ronan glances at him over his shoulder as he pulls open the door. "Mine, obviously."

Five hours in a car alone with Ronan. It’s a long time. They’ve spent a lot of time alone together recently, though, he thinks he can handle it.

 

 

.

  
  
  


“I’ll get out and walk if you put that song on one more time.”

“You’re bluffing, Parrish,’ Ronan cackles, hitting eject anyway. He tosses the disc in the back. Adam considers reaching back and snapping it in too but that wouldn’t be enough to silence it, Ronan probably has a dozen copies hidden all over Monmouth. “Alright. Here,” he says, grabbing a CD from the pile in the centre console and pushing it in without looking at it. “I hope this is more to your taste.”

Drums fill the car, loud and fast and majestic. Adam tilts his head towards it and finds he doesn’t hate it. He doesn’t listen to much music. He has the radio at work which is stuck on the country station and he has the CD Ronan made him but that’s it. He gets that some people swear by music saving their life but Adam doesn’t have that. He has hard work and angry friends and court cases to do that for him. It’s not quite equal.

Ronan’s waiting for an opinion. “It’s good,” he admits, as a female voice soars above the music. There’s something otherworldly about her long notes, the fantasy element to the lyrics. It wouldn’t sound out of place in Cabeswater's caves. “Who is it?”

“Florence and the Machine. Matthew showed me a couple of songs and then he gave me the album for my birthday last year.”

“When is your birthday?” Adam asks, the realisation that Ronan has one is unexpected and shocking.

“Gonna get me a present, Parrish?”

“Yeah, what do you get twelve year olds?”

“Ha ha. I’ll show you something a twelve year old doesn’t have,” but before he can do much more than gesture at his dick the car swerves and he has to return his attention to the road. Adam rolls his eyes. “Gansey tried to make me a cake for my birthday last year,” he says after a while.

“I didn’t think Gansey knew how to open a recipe book,” Adam says. He hunts for the album case in the pile, scanning the track listing. He unfolds the booklet to discover pictures of forests, dark skies, a hazy fog draped across everything.

“He doesn’t. He gave us both food poisoning,” Ronan says and then he laughs, his head thrown back, as though nothing could be funnier than Gansey failing at a mundane task and suffering for it. “You can make my next one.”

“Sure, I’ll fit that into my schedule right after knitting and before I water my plants. Oh, you weren’t talking about my alternate life where I don’t work three jobs?”

“Don’t get snarky with me, Parrish,” Ronan tuts. “Or I won’t invite you to my party.”

“If you have to wear a suit I’m not coming,” he says, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. He’s worried he’s sweating through the back. It’s so hot.

“You clean up okay,” Ronan says, a little quieter than his normal voice, letting them both know that the comment can be ignored if anyone should so please.

“Thanks,” Adam says instead, taking it. “You’re not bad either.”

Ronan scoffs. “Like I didn’t know that,” but when Adam looks he can see a flush of pink at the base of his neck and at the tips of his ears. He nudges the volume louder and allows the music to wash over them.

  
  


.

  
  


“And what do you plan to do with all this education?” an over-perfumed woman asks Adam, leaning in too close. 

“I haven’t decided yet, ma’am,” he says, “I have to get into a college first.”

“A smart boy like you,” she says, hand on his arm. “You’ll be fine. And if you’re still undecided in a few years give me a call and we’ll see if we can’t find something for you.” With that she produces a card from her clutch and presses it into his hand. Her expression turns coy. “You know --”

“Adam,” Gansey interrupts smoothly, appearing by his side. “Could I borrow you for a moment? I’ll have him back in just a second,” he promises the woman who nods, dazed by the force of Gansey’s smile. Adam feels a twinge of sympathy for her -- he knows the feeling.

“Manage to escape?” Ronan drawls, melting out of the crowd to join them. “Sargent’s stuck talking to that asshole about climate control,” he says gleefully, jerking his head towards the back wall where Blue is gesturing wildly up at a man with a goatee and a grimace.

“She’s not going to punch him, is she?” Gansey worries. He cranes his neck to watch, trying to read her lips for any particularly obscene language. Adam heard Ronan teaching her Spanish curses the other week -- it’s anyone’s guess how she’s chosen to utilise them.

“I fucking hope so. This is shit, Gansey. Why’d you drag us here?”

“I didn’t drag you here,” Gansey replies. “I asked and you said yes. You could have turned around at any point on the way here but you didn’t and I appreciate it.”

Ronan rolls his eyes at Adam behind Gansey’s back because sometimes he’s a five year old. Adam nudges him with his elbow, forcing them both over to a quieter area, away from a fretting Gansey. “What are you doing, Parrish?”

"I don't know," he says, which is the truth. All he knows is that when he's not being accosted but rich older women it's not so bad here, just him and Ronan. "This song is nice."

Ronan cocks his head, listening. After a second he says the name of the composer, too long and complicated for Adam to remember. Anyway, he doesn't have to remember it. This isn't school. This isn't work. It's play. Supposedly.

"Didn't take you for a classical music fan, Parrish."

"The CD you made me was severely lacking anything close to it," Adam agrees. "Maybe next time you could include this."

"What makes you think I'll make you another one?" But Adam knows he will, knows he's probably thinking up the track listing, how many times he can smuggle that fucking squash song in. "Come on, Adam," he says now, and roughly tugs at Adam's wrist so there's two inches between them. 

"What are you doing, Lynch?" Adam has to ask, weary with the thought of the possibilities. A bored Ronan in a room like this full of people like these is asking for chaos. "Don't do anything stupid."

"Don't treat me like a child," Ronan replies, and fits his hands to Adam's waist, "and dance."

Adam wants to step back, step away from this, but he also wants to stay and lean into the music, let go. He touches Ronan's shoulders, wonders if this is wrong, if he wasn't supposed to touch, but Ronan smirks at him, and then they move. It's slow, small movements that lets Adam concentrate on the music and Ronan instead of worrying about standing on Ronan's feet. He's never had dancing lessons, never had a reason to ever learn, but he feels he might be doing okay.

"What are you doing?" Gansey says, looking at them suspiciously. There’s a smudge on his collar, the tiniest mark that no one but Adam would notice. When they’re standing in Gansey’s grand house made from old money with Richard Gansey the Third in a suit and perfectly styled hair, the tiniest mark humanises him, reminds Adam that he doesn’t hate this boy, could never.

"Chill out, man," Ronan says. "We're not hurting anyone."

And while that's true, one glance around the room tells Adam that a fair few guests are uncomfortable with their dancing in the corner. Adam's father flashes to the forefront of his mind for a second, red-faced and spitting out _family values_. He feels a shiver run down his spine and steps closer to Ronan.

Okay, so this isn't his usual style of blending into the background but he'd had a glass or two of champagne a half hour ago and so now he feels this is the exact thing to do. Why not makes these rich homophobes squirm.

Gansey's still eyeing them like he's sure they're going to create damage in an awful and creative way but Adam agrees with Ronan here, they're not hurting anyone.

"I'm going to rescue Jane," he says, hand clapping on Ronan's shoulder. "I'll catch up with you in a bit."

"I don't think Sargent needs rescuing," Ronan mutters and then his hand brushes the bottom of Adam's back, just where his slightly-too-small suit jacket ends, sending a thrill up Adam's back, too close to be a coincidence, and Adam feels he's rather the one who may need rescuing.

Instead he allows his fingers to flirt with the collar of Ronan's shirt, feeling like he’s balancing dangerously on the precipice into something else he has no control over. There’s too much of that in his life at the moment. He leaves his fingers where they are -- maybe he can cope with this branch of craziness.

“No funny business, Parrish,” Ronan says, his voice dipped low in Adam’s good ear. “This is a respectable place.”

“I’ll try to keep my hands to myself,” he promises, and keeps his hands exactly where they are.

The song ends. Ronan spins and grabs two glasses of wine from the tray behind them, almost sending the whole tray flying and snarling at the waiter when he opens his mouth to comment. “Drink up, Adam. It’s gonna be a long night.”

  
  


.

  
  


He loses Ronan for an hour and spends the time loitering by the bar, making polite conversation with the various people with their thousand dollar suits and dresses that will be worn once and never again. He thinks they possibly think he's with the catering staff and he finds he doesn't mind that as much as he should. He's used to it. It allows him to back out of conversations he doesn't have the experience to follow, about second homes in the country and where Peter the Fourth is finishing his post-graduate. He supposes he would do anything for Gansey but as always, Gansey is an exception.

He's working out a way of slipping away without letting the woman he's talking to know he can't actually top up her champagne for her but before he can he feels a hand at the small of his back, shadowing the touch from before. “Let’s get out of here.”

Adam lifts a hand in apology when Blue catches them leaving but he doesn’t pause as he follows Ronan through the huge rooms, one after another after another, until they finally make it outside. He takes a breath, holds it deep inside him, and exhales slowly.

“You alright there, Parrish?”

“Mm.” Maybe. “Glad to be out.”

“Yeah. No shit.” Ronan tugs at his tie until it falls loose, unbuttoning the top of his shirt. Adam follows suit, feeling better now they’re outside, not so tight. "Fuck. That beer was better than the crap in Henrietta."

Ronan rolls his head to look at Adam. In the moonlight, his face tilted this way, his eyes are dark and his cheekbones look sharp enough to draw blood should Adam ever lay his hand on his face. He shoves his hands in his pocket, just in case.

"How many did you have?"

"Enough," he says, just to be obtuse. "Maybe you should drive, Parrish."

"You want me to drive the BMW all the way back to Henrietta?" Adam checks because he’s not having the blame put on him when he crashes into a tree.

"Sure," Ronan shrugs. "I trust you," he says easily like those three words aren’t heavier than anything else ever said between them. “Get in, Parrish. It’s freezing.”

Adam throws his jacket over to the passenger seat as he climbs in. He hears Ronan mutter about not being a girl before he dumps the jacket in the back but Adam ignores him in favour of running his hands over the soft steering wheel, the buttons that decorate the centre console. He’s worked on cars like these in the garage, worked on this car a couple of times, but he’s never gotten behind the wheel before, never been allowed to drive out on the open road.

He slowly turns the key in the ignition, glancing over at Ronan one last time, just to make sure. When all he gets is a “get a fucking move on, Parrish” he releases the hand brake and presses down quick on the accelerator. It runs a lot smoother than his patchwork car, he realises quickly when it responds immediately to the slightest nudge of his foot, but apart from that things aren’t too different. He shifts into fifth gear when they hit the interstate, rolls his window down, and lets himself pretend, just for a second, that this is his car, his life.

The boy sprawled out on the seat beside him can fit into that life too. He’s coming to consider the possibility that maybe the two of them could fit in all variations of their lives. The magician and the dreamer. Yeah. It has a ring to it.

The monotonous black landscape that surrounds them for miles and miles allows him to reevaluate the last few months and how much things would change should he act on this thing that hovers between him and Ronan whenever they're together. Going by his twisted relationship with Kavinsky Adam's willing to bet his car that Ronan's not a romantic but maybe -- when he adds up the looks, the hand cream, the rent -- maybe he would lose his car after all because maybe he is romantic, just in his own way. His hand slips on the wheel when he allows his mind to wander into possibilities of Ronan's body and his own. The blackness of his tattoo contrasting starkly with the paleness of his chest, his hips. How it could feel to pull Ronan apart, be trusted to witness and be a part of his most vulnerable moments. It's something Adam has had fleeting thoughts of before but never fully considered. He grips the wheel tightly, shifts down a gear or two when they reach a sharp bend.

“I think I like you,” Adam says slowly, a few more miles down the road, testing the words out in real time. “The way Gansey likes Blue.”

Ronan shifts in his seat but doesn’t say anything. The wind pushing through the rolled-down window is sore on Adam’s face. He closes it with a push of a button; the ensuing silence is thick, cloying. Ronan still hasn’t spoken.

“Did you hear me?” He doesn’t know if he has it in him to say it again but if he has to he will. This needs to be heard. _He_ needs to be heard.

"Yeah I fucking heard you. Jesus, Parrish! Pull over."

Adam swerves to the side of the road, thankful there are no other cars around. His hands are shaky when he switches off the engine, falling back against the headrest. That tiny flute of champagne he had three hours ago thrums in the back of his head.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“I wanted to.”

“This isn’t something Cabeswater is telling you?”

“What? No. Why would Cabeswater do this?”

“You’ve been different since you gave yourself to them,” Ronan says. “I wasn’t sure.”

“If I’m my own person? I still have my brain, and my heart, and my body, and they’re all telling me that I like you.”

This is enough. Ronan leans across and kisses him. Ronan is chaotic, a tower of tightly-contained emotions that are always threatening to spill out at any given moment, the ability to shut everyone out perfected, but the kiss is hesitant, careful, and Adam presses into it, anxious but curious, searching for more. He feels Ronan's hand come up to curve his cheek, his palm softer than he thought to expect. The taste of Ronan, the smell of him, his skin on his skin, makes Adam brave. He opens his mouth to deepen the kiss, elbow falling on the box in the centre of the car. This isn’t the best place to do this, he realises. The angles are all off, Adam’s seat belt is digging into his side, jabbing his ribs, but he doesn’t want to pull away just yet. He tilts his head, nose brushing Ronan’s, and he feels something inside of him release, washing over him, which he hysterically thinks for a second might be Cabeswater offering their congratulations. Adam and Ronan have always been their favourite -- their slave and their dreamer.

Ronan is pressing closer, his mouth languid, easy, on Adam’s, but there’s an undercurrent there of needing more, needing it soon. Adam draws back, kisses him once more, and then falls back in his seat.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ronan says -- the word drips from his mouth, puddles in his lap.

“Fuck,” Adam agrees.

“What now?”

“We could go back to mine,” Adam suggests, his eyes flickering over Ronan’s torso, down to the bulge in his jeans and back to his eyes, heavy with want. Adam’s lips feel swollen and used; when he touches them with his thumb they feel the same as always: a little chapped, soft, like they haven’t spent the last however many minutes working with Ronan’s to tug them over into an area of their relationship they haven’t had the courage to explore yet. Adam’s thumbnail digs into a part of his lip that has scabbed over from where he last tore the skin biting it. He wants to press his lips to Ronan’s jawline, his neck, turn him over and taste his tattoo against his tongue. “Yeah. Back to mine,” he says, and now his voice is a little hoarse. When Ronan catches it he smirks, a secret one Adam hasn’t seen before; one that promises so much if things continue to go his way.

Adam flips him off.

  
  


.

  
  
  


The remainder of the journey home is loud. Ronan's hands skate across the dashboard, the handle, the empty drink holders. Adam's fingers fidget to reach out and grab them, either to make him stop or just to keep contact with him. It feels like now they've had that first brush with what's possible they have to hurtle towards the next stage, to test if this is what they really want. Adam wonders why he’s reacting to this desire for another boy with apparent ease. Was it the impromptu dancing in Gansey’s house that had told him there is nothing to be scared of, there is nothing wrong with different, or has it always been there, cowering in the face of his father’s homophobia. As he takes more and more steps away from the semblance of life he once had with his biological family he feels a loosening within him. He allows himself do what he wants. To want who he wants. Right now he wants Ronan, the boy with the cluttered mind of broken dreams; of beautiful dreams; of scary, monstrous dreams that Adam can’t even begin to imagine.

The car takes them home much quicker than Adam’s would ever have managed, and even Gansey with his SUV, not the ancient Pig, would not have pushed the speed limits so often and so wildly, but Ronan is stretched out in the seat, his shirt rumpled and his mouth slightly parted, head tilted just a little away from Adam, as if he knows, he fucking knows, that after all that time of Ronan looking at Adam, they both know now that Adam was looking back.

When the rusted sign welcoming them to Henrietta appears in the headlights Adam’s foot dips on the accelerator, urging the BMW faster through the empty streets. They pass Fox Way where Maura is back home, safe, and the convenience store where Noah dropped the snow globe and disappeared on them, and the turn-off leading up to the forest that houses Cabeswater. Passing these places so known to them with something completely unknown swelling between them twists at Adam’s insides. Not in a negative way, just expectant, waiting.

When they pull to a stop in front of the church and get out, Ronan steps into Adam’s space and kisses him. This one is fast and desperate, his tongue sliding along Adam’s bottom lip and into his mouth, his hands digging into Adam’s waist, tight enough that Adam feels the urge to wriggle out of it but instead falls in closer. He feels light-headed. He feels like making out with Ronan Lynch is exactly what he needs right now; in the midst of everything turning his life upside down he thinks this might be something he can handle. He mouths a kiss on Ronan’s jaw, tastes the aftershave he’d watched him put on hours before, and lets himself have this.

  
  


.

  
  


“What did you two do when you bailed on us?” Blue asks from her position on the ground, her back resting against Ronan’s car, eyes narrowed against the sun. The three of them are hanging around Monmouth Manufacturing’s parking lot waiting for Gansey to get home from wherever he disappeared to because Ronan forgot his keys and no one’s letting him kick down the door. It’s a nice day; they can stand to be outside for a while.

Adam glances at Ronan, how could he not, and mirrors the practised look of disinterest they’re both so good at. “Nothing, really. Got pizza, watched a movie.”

“What’d you watch?” she asks, because she’s clever and she’s not buying their stories. “I haven’t seen any good movies in a while.”

“Jupiter Ascending,” Adam says just as Ronan says, “The second Star Trek.”

The smile grows on Blue’s face. Adam drops his gaze to the miniscule gap between him and Ronan, debates shifting a couple of inches to the left to widen it, and then decides that would make it look like they had something to hide. He doesn’t think they do. Not from Blue, Gansey, and Noah. He thinks Noah might already know anyway. He thinks Noah might have known for a long time before Adam did.

“It’s none of your fucking business what we were doing, maggot,” Ronan bites. “S’long as you and Dick enjoyed yourselves.”

“Way to ruin a conversation, Lynch,” Blue replies, getting to her feet. “After the two of you abandoned me with all those rich snobs the least you could do would be to apologize -- but oh, right, that would be asking too much.”

“It looked like you were really hitting it off with those old white straight men,” Adam offers, stepping back just slightly when Blue swings her glare to him. His back hits Ronan’s shoulder. “Look. We’re sorry for leaving, aren’t we, Lynch?” Ronan lifts one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Don’t leave.”

She sighs. “Only if you promise to never leave me at one of those things again. At least I can get my opinions across with you guys -- but there my views counted for nothing. And,” she adds angrily, “they found it to be perfectly acceptable to talk right over the top of me, as if I wasn’t there, all because of my gender. Gansey had the nerve to tell calm down at one point and I swear --” she stops then, hands on hips, and casts her eyes sky-ward. “Just promise to come to the next one. God forbid such an event dies out.”

Adam can feel Ronan’s hand on his back, fingers splayed. “We promise,” he says, elbowing Ronan in the ribs, hard enough to make him _oof_ with the pain, swearing elaborately. “Any time.”

“Hmm.” Blue’s still watching them like she knows everything that happened in the last 24 hours. Like she has Noah’s ability to read Adam’s mind and see Ronan stretched out on his bed, bare chest glistening with sweat, with Adam sucking a bruise onto his neck, the sharp tang of salt and skin just how he imagined. Adam’s been trying for the best part of the morning to commit the sound Ronan had made when he came to his mind, something to fall back on when he’s trapped at work and needs reminding that someone wants him to touch them, to kiss them and hold them. He thinks he’ll need a reprisal, just in case they find Glendower and before he gives him the favour he insists on Adam describing Ronan’s orgasm from start to finish. With the way things have been going Adam’s not ruling it out entirely.

“Whatever, I’m out of here,” Ronan says, hand catching the collar of Adam’s shirt. “Let’s go, Parrish.”

“Where are we going?” he asks.

“Yours,” and then he grins, sharp and feral, and Adam allows himself to be pushed into the passenger seat, the door slamming shut behind him. From inside the car, with the sound muted, he can only hear fragments of Ronan’s parting words with Blue. He catches _church_ and _whore_ and _shitbag_ and keeps himself out of it.

“Sargent can suck my dick,” Ronan mutters, throwing himself into the car and twisting the key, the engine roaring to life.

“Yeah?” Adam says, something close to a laugh building in his chest.

“Fuck you, Parrish,” and then he leans across and cuffs the back of Adam’s head, his hand lingering there. “You can suck my dick, too, if that’s what you fucking what.”

Adam rolls down his window, watching Henrietta roll by. It’s hot out again, the summer demanding to be noticed before June hits and all anyone can do is complain about the heat. Adam glances over at Ronan, cataloging the curve of his lip, the bruise shadowing his jaw, the bruise he made, and when Ronan turns his head and catches him, he winks. It’s summer, they’re all alive, and Adam’s going to make out with a boy who can dream everything into reality, because he wants to, and because he can.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
